Pirates CCG - 24 July 2007

A big four-player game with almost 30 ships on the board. We put together four fleets (Pirates, English, two Spanish) of 100 points each, and played on four of the fold-out seamaps that Andy had taped together. We randomly placed eight islands with two of them actually being fog banks, and put five treasure pieces on each of the six real islands plus the three on the map. The peaceful starting position looked like this...


Andy, David and James set out for the nearby islands to start collecting gold. Kieron's tactic was to sail an armada towards James' nearest ships. James defended with his largest ships whilst his small, swift ships continued to explore islands and collect gold. Kieron and James sea battle continued all game, leaving them both with just a couple of ships - and a lot of flotsam and jetsam...

Andy had a small battle with Kieron and held on to the far eastern island, and also briefly visited the Kieron/James naval warfare to take out James' well-placed fort before it could do to much damage to Kieron. David had a quiet but effective early game, eventually succumbing and attacking Andy in order to see a bit of action. The end result looked like this...

The final tally of treasure saw David win with 50 gold pieces, James second with 39, Andy third with 29, and Kieron last with none!

We talked about the following amendments for next time we play:

• simultaneous firing
• nine treasures per island (as the rules indicate, not the five we used)
• a scoring system to include enemy ships destroyed and own ships lost, as well as treasure

A great looking game that is a lot of fun to play. A few Rival tweaks and we'll have a cracking game here. Played at Andy's before he and Kieron set off for their Bulgarian adventure.

Pirates CCG - 20 June

The first outing of the Pirates collectable card game which both James and Adrian had bought in the last few weeks - part of a series starting with Pirates of the Spanish Main, and most recently (to tie in the latest Pirates film) Pirates at Ocean's Edge. Wonderfully illustrated pirate ships are pressed out of the cards, and constructed in 3D to make really nice-looking models. Players control a group of ships to explore islands, discover treasure and fight each other.



The rules are quite simple but have some neat mechanisms, with all the info you need about your ship on its card. Notable exceptions in the rules are Wind (ships move the same distance in any direction), moving or shooting each turn (and not both) and initiative (which we introduced as rolls at the beginning of each turn). So further rules tweaking is needed or we might try using versions of Wooden Ships & Iron Men or similar rulesets which have been adapted for use with these ships.



The game started with mad rushes towards islands and we all starting stocking up with gold to return to our home bases. When the gold was more scarce, battles commenced - and masts were rapidly blasted off many of the ships - see devastation above. The number of treasures collected were roughly the same but their values meant Adrian was well ahead, with James second and Kieron cursing his paltry collection of 1 and 2 gold pieces.


A fun, good-looking game... but one not to be taken too seriously.